“I can see everything,” he says.
“What about the courthouse? How does it look?” she asks, but she knows how it looks. She’s been here already. The office has a direct line of sight into the back entrance of the courthouse. A nice, clear view of the parking lot and the courthouse doors and the ten-yard strip of concrete between the parking lot and those doors. A lot can happen in a ten-yard strip of land. There are going to be thousands of people out in the street, but within the parking lot there’s only going to be a couple of cops and Joe. Shouldn’t be a problem. Crowd won’t be in the way. All Raphael has to do is stay calm. Six months ago the view from the other building she chose was very different. Six months ago it looked like a mess from any angle. Cranes. Bulldozers. Work crews.
“Everything is so clear,” he says.
“May I?”
He hands her the scope. It has higher-quality optics than the binoculars. She looks at the courthouse, then up and down the street where there is going to be lots of traffic. The courthouse is a single story. The elevated view from the third floor of the office complex means she can see over the top of the courthouse and further into town. The courthouse takes up an entire block, with the back entrance right in the middle. She can see roads leading in all directions, two main roads running parallel up and down the city—one road passing by the courts on the left, the other on the right. So many protesters will be here on Monday that some of these roads will be closed off. It’s going to be perfect. Right now the roads are almost empty. Saturday evening in the middle of winter in a part of town where there are office buildings and a courthouse and nowhere serving beer—why would there be people down there?
“Here,” she says, and hands the scope back to him.
He lies down and holds the scope. A nice elevation. Simple to look down on the parking lot without anything in the way. Not too high that they have to worry about wind swirling between the buildings. And not too high that they won’t be able to escape quickly.
Biggest thing they have to worry about is weather. They don’t need great weather, but bad weather won’t work. It can’t be pouring heavy with rain. Can’t be gusts of wind. Problem with Christchurch weather is the way you forecast it is the same way you forecast who’s going to win a horse race. You go with the favorite, but everything has a chance.
“I won’t be able to lie down,” he says. “It’d mean shooting through the window. Windows open waist high and above.”
She looks at her watch. It’s ten minutes from six o’clock. The transport is arriving at the back entrance of the court at six o’clock on the dot. She knows that because it was in the itinerary she stole from Schroder. She also knows the solution to Raphael’s problem. She’d figured that out when she came here on Thursday.
“Help me with this,” she says, and she moves over to the paints where a large, canvas drop cloth has been folded up into a neat square foot. They unfold it and carry it over to the window.
“What’s the deal with this?”
“We hang it up,” she says, and reaches into her bag for some duct tape.
Raphael seems to figure it out and together they start stripping off lengths of tape and a few minutes later they have a curtain that shields them from the street. The room, dark to begin with, now becomes pitch-black, and she uses a flashlight function on her cell phone to shed some light. She takes a knife and cuts a square of drop cloth away from in front of one of the opening windows, leaving a hole not much bigger than her head.
“I shoot through this?” Raphael asks.
“And you’ll be lying down too,” she says. “From out on the street nobody is going to see a thing.”
“Lying down on what?” he asks, and she turns toward the sawhorses and the plank of wood and he doesn’t have to ask anything else.
They drag the makeshift platform into place. He lies down on it and shuffles himself into position so he can see out through the drop cloth.
“Try it out,” she says, and she attaches the scope to the gun and hands it over.
He shuffles himself a little further up the planks. He puts the scope against his eye. Tightens the gun into his shoulder.
“It’s good,” he says.
“So you’ll be able to pull off the shot?”
He smiles up at her. “With the window open, yeah.”
“Just don’t open it when you’re in the uniform,” she says. “You open it before that.”
“I know,” he says.
She looks at her watch. “It’s almost time,” she says.
Raphael stays in position. Melissa moves to the edge of their makeshift curtain and kills the light on her phone before pulling the curtain aside. Street lights, building lights, tungsten and neon burning from every direction in the city, more than enough to see clearly. They don’t make any further conversation. They just wait in silence. Somewhere in an adjoining office, or perhaps even the one below or above, an air-conditioning unit kicks into action, the low hum creating a background noise that makes the office complex feel less like a building in a ghost town. But not a lot less.
Right on time a series of headlights comes from the south. Three police cars leading a van, three police cars following it. They’re driving slowly. None of the lights are flashing. They disappear from view, as the angle of the courthouse gets in the way as the cars get close to it, but she knows they’re turning toward the front of the building.
On Monday their progress will be made slower by the traffic and by the crowds of people.
They’re the decoy.
At the same time a van comes into view from the parallel street. It disappears from view as the courthouse blocks them, but then comes back into view as it comes around the back. It turns into the street between the office building and the back entrance. There’s a chain-link fence stretching the perimeter of the court’s parking lot. Somebody inside the compound pushes a button and part of the fence rolls open. The van drives in. The fence rolls closed.
The van parks up close to the door. The back of the van is facing the office window. Its doors swing open.
“I can see all of it,” Raphael says.
“Focus,” she says. “Don’t miss the shot.”
She can see it all too, but not in any great detail. Two men dressed in black step out of the back of the van. Then out shuffles a man in orange. She can’t see the chains, but can tell by the way he’s moving he must be wearing them around his ankles as well as his wrists. He steps down. People are pointing weapons at him. For two seconds nobody moves.
A lot can happen in two seconds.
The prisoner starts his thirty-foot walk.
“Do you have the shot?”
“I have it,” Raphael says.
“How clear is it?”
“Clear enough.”
The thirty feet get eaten up. The group stands around the back door.
“May I?” she asks, and she turns toward Raphael, but can’t see him. She puts out a hand and takes a step toward him. The only light in the office is what’s coming through the hole in the curtain. She feels nothing at first, then touches the side of the gun that’s being held toward her. She grabs it and moves back into position. She looks at the four cops and the man in orange. Almost like a painted target. The man in orange is a police officer. She’s seen him before. On TV or in real life she can’t remember, and it doesn’t rightly matter. Tonight he’s playing the part of Joe. This small field trip’s a rehearsal for Monday morning’s big event.
Also a rehearsal for Raphael and her too.
The cops are chatting with a security guard at the entrance. One of them throws back his head and laughs and the others are grinning at him.
“Can’t miss,” Raphael says.
“There are going to be a lot of people down there,” she says. “People will figure out the police may use the back entrance. The police may panic and have a couple of cars escort it. But no matter how many there are, there’s still only going to be one van. One Joe. And he’ll be covering the same ground his stand-in just covered.”